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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as the next U.S. Attorney General.

Trump announced his latest cabinet appointment Wednesday afternoon. Gaetz has been a long-time Trump supporter and is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House.

"Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department," Trump said in a statement.

Gaetz represents Florida's District 1.

Trump has announced a flurry of nominations in the week since his election. Earlier on Wednesday, he selected Sen. Marco Rubio to serve as his Secretary of State.

He should be just trolling I think ...

Can someone explain to me why is everyone freaking out about this guy? I pick up a fair amount of American politics by osmosis in places like this, and the name does sound familiar, but I have no idea why everybody is losing their damn mind.

Gaetz is funny enough to be trolling, but more likely Trump just wants someone willing to be enough of a hatchetman. Be interesting to see how much of the confirmation fight circles around his actual philosophy, rather than around how oily he is (spoiler: yes) or the reputed and increasingly dubious allegations of the most sexual impropriety.

More effort than this, please.

We are a discussion site, not a link aggregator. Or, uh, a quote aggregator.

Tulsi Gabbard got Director of National Intelligence. Rubio is still twisting in the wind waiting for his position to become official. I wonder if Trump is just doing his ritual humiliation ceremony, same as he did with Chris Christy.

Gaetz immediately resigned from his house seat...maybe this is a bureaucratic poisoned chalice for the senate, which has the choice of either confirming Gaetz as AG or facing a potential appointment of Gaetz to Rubio's vacant seat?

I do think that we need some bulls in china shop in washington if the western civilization is to be ok in the next century. So Tulsi is a good pick. But gaetz is not qualified I think and probably couldn't pick up to speed fast enough.

Surely these picks are a smokescreen. I bet JD Vance is huddling with Yarvin, Musk, and Thiel in a smoke-filled room right now discussing which anon Twitter accounts and Mottizens will get the call to serve in the shadow cabinet. They must be cross-referencing the Gray Mirror Substack subscriber list to make sure they don’t accidentally double-count any alts.

No, they’re not, there are upper and upper mid level officials in the Texas and Florida governments who will get drafted instead.

You laugh, but Yarvin himself has been very strongly opining that Nothing Ever Happens and any Trumpian hopes were likely to crash on the shores of redtape.

I'm willing to bet that Musk and Thiel will get what they wanted out of the admin (i.e.: the feds stop putting roadblocks in front of them), but twitter anon dreams of power because they are mutuals with Vance were delusional.

feds stop putting roadblocks in front of them

If/When the Dems regain power, especially if MAGA dies fully with Trump, what do you think is going to happen to them long term? My guess is imprisonment or just thrown off a building depending on the fallout of a Trump administration.

I'm quite certain this is why they've been angling to purge all the people who won't leave them alone.

There are large parts of the deep state that understand that their work is needed for America to keep its military edge. It's not clear to me that the people who want to fuck with that are the most senior or the most powerful.

Musk joked that either Trump wouldn't win or Musk would be imprisoned. It's a joke. But novel legal theories worked once to secure dozens of felony convictions. Why not a second pass?

I wouldn't recommend throwing Musk off a building; he'd probably shoot flames out of his ass and land safely.

I would imagine they think by the time the Dems regain power, the impossible-to-work-with faction will have been soundly defeated and whoever takes over will only be a drag on their businesses, not anything worse. I don't believe that, but Musk, at least, is an optimist.

They'll do what filthy rich billionaires did before them : Donate = Bribe = Lobby.

Now that Elon & Thiel are Texans, the state should offer them plenty of protection even after Trump goes away.